Feathers? When pigs fly!

 I'm following along with a monthly lesson that sewcalgal is doing to help us learn free motion quilting techniques. This month was feathers. There is a really good tutorial here if you would like to learn. 

 

 As with any new design you should first draw it on paper to practice - I tried my doodle buddy (free I pad app) and had some fun.

Not one to spend time on just a useless practice piece I sewed some scraps together to make a mug rug for my practice. 

Since the pigs wings were cut off, I simply made "feather wings"

Pretty cool!

 

Furry logic

 

 One of Jane Seabrook's wonderful illustrations.

Great advice:-)

dog snuggle tunnel sacks

Sometimes I need a break from making quilts to make something quick, easy and mindless. Sort of a pallette or mind cleansing if you will.

A friend of mine has a daschund and wanted me to make her a snuggle tunnel bed. Apparently daschunds or "doxie's are notorious for burrowing under the cover in their owners beds. Not ever hearing of this I of course had to google and investigate, especially because it had to do with dogs and "how could I not know of this!" I should know of anything having to do with the overindulgence of the canine persuasion and had some fleece fabric sitting in my stash that was purchased on sale with no purpose in mind

and so this is what I came up with

some of the ones I saw on the internet were like a sack with the end closed, but I thought the ones with both ends open made more sense and seemed safer somehow. I wouldn't want the little guy to not have a way out once he was in there. Just in case you want to make one, they really are easy. The suggested sizes are as follows:

XS - $18.00 18' x 20" <8 lbs (toy)
S - $24.00 20" x 25" 8 lbs to 18 lbs (mini doxie and tweenies)
M - $30.00 25" x 29" <22 lbs ( two mini doxies or one small standard doxie)
L - $36.00 29" x 36" > 23 lbs ( standard doxie)

by the way a tweenie is a medium sized daschund

this one is out of some velour leopard print and brown fleece

So I have made two each of the above and am going to do one more, this time with the inside lined with a cotton sheet like fabric and fleece on the outside. I would think that would be more like a bed that these guys seem to like to burrow in so I'll give it to my friend to have her doxie road test it.

Phhhhhheeeuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!  Now that I got that out of my system - on to my art quilts! I already have about 4 different ideas, just need the time to do it. I guess starting would be the best way to go about that, huh? :-)

By the way I am so excited to have won the bali pops in the giveaway that katie's quilting corner did. One of the ideas of quilts I want to do is with those pops............................. more to come:-)

happy quilting (or snuggle sack making)

All You Need is Love

 Magoo

 Abbey

 Princess Sophie

Whimsical mermaid giveaway

 The  whimsical mermaid is giving away a charm pack of free spirit fabric. Just pop over there and follow her blog before feb. 15th. And you to may be a winner:-) myself being the frugal (some say cheap) quilter that I am, I have not yet bought a charm pack, jelly roll - none of that. But listening to so many podcasting quilters rave about them, I really should break down and try them. Who know, maybe I'll win this and be forever changed and enlightened.

 While you are there, check out her tutorial on making wristlets. Looks easy enough and I could use these at work. The link to that is here.

She has alot of great tutorials, so check it out

Happy Quilting!

lavender and white

I think lavender may be my favorite scent, flower and color. Paired with white it just looks so relaxing and fresh.

Road Home Quilting had a great blog post on color and she had some inspiring photos, the above being one of them. I had to make a lavender and white quilt!

I started out making a patchwork scrappy background of the lavender shades with a little green thrown in and I was going to put a chair on it and call it a day, but the background just didn't work so I scrapped my scrappy squares and went back to what I do best - landscapes. 

lavender field

$50.00

(free shipping)

can you see the little fairy button by my chair?

and is that peter cotton tail following his bunny trail?

this was really fun to make and thank you to road home for the inspiration

why don't you go out and smell some lavender today:)

Happy Quilting

there's a spider on my toilet paper!

One of the blogs that I follow - quilt jane is having a contest where you make a cover for your toilet paper roll out of fabric. You can decorate it any way you wish - the wackier the better (at least in my book). She has a tutorial on her blog on how she made hers and I am here to tell you what I did. This isn't really a tutorial because I didn't think to take photos during the process but since it really is easy - I think you can get the basic idea and with some imagination - make your own toilet paper cover in your own theme or style and enter in the contest. Check out the group site on flickr

The covering the toilet paper part is easy on this - I cut off the arm of a black fleece top that I was tired of and used the arm end because it's bigger, hacked off a couple of inches more than the top to bottom measurement of the toilet paper, then hemmed the top and bottom on the sewing machine. You can then just slip it over the toilet paper and tuck the top into the middle hole. Quick and easy! Now you can play with your embellishments.  

Now I had a head start on this because for Halloween I had made this spider as a wrist fabric bracelet type of thing. I covered a big button with batting and then fabric for the body, attached a wooden green ball bead for the head and wrapped black and white yarn around long metal bread ties and attached  them to the body. This is all done by hand - good for watching TV work.

Then I took some orange fabric, made the shape I wanted (this was originally for my wrist so I measured my wrist and added an inch or so for seam and overlap). Put right sides together with batting, sewed all around leaving enough to turn inside out. Once it is turned inside out, iron flat and that open space you can sew together when you make the spider web. For that use black thread and free motion quilt a spider web design all over the orange fabric. If you need help visualizing a web go here to see a simple one.

Then sew on any buttons or beads that seem appropriate for your project. Lastly I took some of those dollar store hair ties with the plastic balls (green in the photo) and I cut off one end, sewed by hand the ball to the black fabric fleece base, then tacked the elastic with the other ball to the top orange / spider part. That will enable you to easily take the top part on and off. You could make one for every holiday or season. The skies the limit for these....................mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmh?  how could I make a sky cover????

"she thinks to herself as the wheels of creativity churn in her head"

Katie's giveaway

Katie's quilting corner is having a giveaway! 

the above bali pops is the prize

You just have to go to her sponsor's fabric shop and pick your favorite item and comment. The dolphins and sea turtles was mine. She has beautiful batiks and free shipping over 35 bucks so not bad. This green one also caught my eye, as did the batiks below.

I could look at batiks all day!